CATHOLIC TEMPERANCE 



By C. P. BARON, 

Pastor of St. Martin’s Church, 
Yorkville, Ind. 

Author of 

-GOSPEL AND GOSSIP,” 
“AMONG ROBBERS,” 
“CATHOLICS AND PROHIBITION.” 


Forty Thousand Copies Sold. 


“Let them (priests) never cease to cry out boldly against 
drunkenness and whatever leads to it.”—Third Plenary Council 
of Baltimore, 1884-’85. 


Price per copy, postpaid, 5 cents. 
Liberal discount in quantities. 



AMERICAN ISSUE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
WESTERVILLE, OHIO 


August. 1913. 







“Let pastors do their best to drive the plague of intemperance from 
the fold of Christ by assiduous preaching and exhortation, and to shine 
before all as models of abstinence.” 

Leo XIII., Letter of March 27, 1887. 




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“Nor florid prose, nor honied lies of rhyme, 

Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime.”—Byron. 


i. INTRODUCTORY. 

Whoever is interested in the welfare of man and 
the salvation of souls, must be interested in tem¬ 
perance. This booklet is written in the hope of 
effecting a better mutual understanding between 
Catholics and non-Catholics on the temperance 
question. 

Most people want what is right and here, as in 
everything else, good people ought to find a way of 
co-operating. “The children of this world are wiser 
in their generation than the children of light.”— 
Luke 16 : 8 . The “children of this world” rule, be¬ 
cause they are united; but “the children of light” do 
not rule, because they do not work together. 

Christ says, “He that is not against you, is for 
you.”—Mark 9 : 39 ; and by his own example he 
taught us to befriend not only those who are with 
us, but also those who are not against us. 


2 . MEANING OF TEMPERANCE. 

I have witnessed long-winded and learned dis¬ 
cussions on the original meaning of the word “Tem¬ 
perance,” as if its present popular use were a 
veritable calamity. Temperance in the catechism 
sense means, “One of the Cardinal Virtues (Wisdom 
8 : 7 ), which restrains our sensual inclinations and 
desires, that they may not lead us from virtue.” 
—Deharbe. Temperance in another sense is defined: 
“Abstinence from the use or pursuit of anything in- 


3 




jurious to moral or physical well-being.” — Cent. 
Diet, and Ency. 

In the Standard Dictionary we find this defini¬ 
tion: “In a more recent and generally accepted 
sense, the principle and practice of total abstinence 
from intoxicating beverages.” St. Thomas wrote: 
“There are things contrary to a good condition of 
life, and the temperate man does not use these in 
any measure, for this would be a sin against tem¬ 
perance.”—Sum. Theol. Ques. CXLI, Art. 6. 

Kind reader, what folly to niggle and quarrel 
about definitions and trifles, while tens of thousands 
that coul4 be saved by united effort, each year go 
down to ruin through drink! 


3. CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 
PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE. 

Protestants have preached for twenty-five years, 
that “the beverage liquor traffic can never be legal¬ 
ized without sin,” and most of them exclude liquor 
dealers from church membership. Would to God 
they had always faithfully lived up to their profes¬ 
sion. Occasionally I have pinned my faith to some 
non-Catholic temperance leader, to find later that 
his practice did not harmonize with his profession. 
A large proportion of them, no doubt, have been 
and are faithful to their temperance professions; and 
some of them have suffered financial loss, social 
ostracism and political death, rather than compro¬ 
mise principle. All honor and credit to these heroes. 

To excuse their own negligence, Catholics some- 


4 



times accuse Protestant temperance workers of 
Pharisaism, saying that temperance constitutes their 
whole religion, and that they look updfc vices and 
crimes not directly related to temperance, as negli¬ 
gible peccadillos. Be this as it may, it cannot serve 
us an excuse for our remissness in temperance work; 
for we shall be judged by Jesus Christ, not accord¬ 
ing to what Protestants may or may not do, but ac¬ 
cording to the Gospel. Furthermore alcoholism is 
unceasingly turning so many of our own into crim¬ 
inals of the worst kind, that it behooves us to strike 
our own breast rather than throw stones at any 
outside sinner. 

Catholics, while insisting that drinking and the 
drink traffic are not intrinsically wrong, have de¬ 
plored and condemned the drink abuse as much as 
any one else. 

On March 27, 1887, Pope Leo wrote Archbishop 
(then Bishop) Ireland: “For it is well known to us 
how ruinous, how deplorable, is the injury, both to 
faith and to morals, that is to be feared from intem¬ 
perance in drink. Nor can we sufficiently praise the 
prelates of the United States, who recently, in the 
Plenary Council of Baltimore, with weightiest words 
condemned this abuse, declaring it to be a perpetual 
incentive to sin and a fruitful root of all evils, plung¬ 
ing the families of the intemperate into direst ruin, 
and dragging numberless souls down into everlasting 
perdition.” 

The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884- 
’85), as Pope Leo puts it, “with weightiest words 

5 


condemned this (drink) abuse,” and decreed: “Let 
them (Catholic saloon-keepers) choose a more hon¬ 
orable way of making a living.” 

The “Pastoral Letter of the Bishops in the First 
Plenary Council of Quebec” said: “It has above all 
been realized that the evil should be attacked in its 
source, namely, that the traffic in intoxicating liquors 
should be suppressed (prohibited), or where that is 
not possible, at least restricted and more severely 
controlled.” 

Our laws, principles and resolutions are all right, 
but, wrote Bishop Watterson of Columbus, Ohio, to 
his priests, March i, 1894, anent the subject under 
consideration: “What is the use of resolutions and 
commendations unless we give them force and effi¬ 
cacy?” People judge us by results. Christ said, 
“Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit.” “By 
their fruits you shall know them.”—Matt. 7:17, 16. 
Thousands of patriotic Americans look upon Catholic 
progress as a calamity-boding misfortune, and with 
all their might oppose the Church, solely because of 
our complicity with the un-American and anti- 
American liquor traffic. A certain zealous priest 
wrote me: “Such aiding of a disreputable business 
makes nothing less than a mockery of prayers for 
the ‘exaltation of holy Mother Church.* ” While this 
may be an exaggeration, the conviction is, in my 
opinion, shared by numberless conscientious Cath¬ 
olics throughout the land. “It is not,” wrote Dr. 
Brownson, “the invincible logic of Catholics, but 
their pure and noble example in fulfilling the sub¬ 
lime precepts and counsels of the Gospel, that over- 
6 


comes the world.” Catholic logic is “invincible” 
only when confirmed by “Catholic” living. The one 
weak link in our chain is our actual position on the 
drink question. (III. Council of Balt., No. 113.) 


4. THE CATHOLIC ATTITUDE. 

Preliminaries and A Principle. 

Let it be clearly understood that we are not 1 : 
concerned here with a question of “faith” or “morals” 
in regard to which the Catholic Church claims infalli¬ 
bility, but with a question of policy, where priest 
differs from priest, bishop from bishop, and pope 
from pope. 1 

One more preliminary point to ease the con¬ 
sciences of those who believe that the policies of 
superior ecclesiastics should be considered above¬ 
criticism: Whoever loves truth hates error, and will 
endeavor to eradicate error and correct a mistakenr 
policy wherever feasible. The Evangelists were not 
silent concerning the denial of our Lord by St. 
Peter, nor his betrayal by Judas. Cardinal Newman 
justly condemns “that endemic perennial fidget which 
possesses us about giving scandal (by censuring 
where censure is deserved), whereas of all scandals, 
such omissions are the greatest.”—Hist. Sketches II., 
p. 231. • 

Drinking Not Wrong in Se, (Intrinsically). 

Catholics have, in my humble opinion, put en¬ 
tirely too much emphasis on the harmlessness in se 
of drinking, which is all right in theory, but which 



'‘the unlearned and unstable .... wrest to their own 
perdition.”—2 Peter 3:16. 

In se is used in one sense by lawyers, and in 
•quite another by Catholic theologians. In the ex¬ 
cellent book, “The Legalized Outlaw,” by the Hon. 
Samuel R. Artman, page 195, we read: “The supreme 
and appellate courts have both said a saloon, oper¬ 
ated without a license, is a public nuisance per se,” 
(or in se). That is, of course, using the expression 
In the legal sense. In se, as used in Catholic the¬ 
ology, means intrinsically, in its very nature. What¬ 
ever is wrong in se in this sense, is always and 
under all circumstances wrong, just as a crooked 
stick is always crooked, never straight. Thus blas¬ 
phemy, idolatry, lying, hatred of God, are wrong in 
se, for under no conceivable circumstances can they 
be justified; but carrying a revolver, or buying pois¬ 
on, etc., no matter what evils and crimes may at 
times follow from such acts, are not wrong in se, 
because under some circumstances such acts are 
harmless. These acts belong to what are in theory 
called indifferent acts, and we cannot determine 
whether they are good or bad, until we know the 
circumstances under which they were committed. 
To light a match is an indifferent act, to light it 
carelessly in a powder magazine is circumstancially 
wrong. To drive an automobile at a breakneck 
speed is in se an indifferent act, but the sdme act 
becomes circumstancially wrong and criminal under 
certain conditions. If a man tells me he drank 
whisky, beer, strichnine or belladonna, I cannot de¬ 
cide on the morality of his act, until I know some- 
8 


thing of the quantity, quality, reason for drinking, 
etc. He may have taken it by mistake, may have 
taken only a very small quantity, or as an anaes¬ 
thetic, a medicine, etc. When, therefore, a man 
argues that in Germany, Ireland, Palestine or any¬ 
where else they do thus and so, the answer is, ‘‘That 
has nothing to do with the case in hand, as our 
circumstances—here—and—now must determine the 
morality of our drinking and our drink traffic.” 


5. SOME POINTS NOT TO BE OVERLOOKED 
IN DETERMINING THE MORALITY 

OF DRINKING. | 

Alcoholic Drink Not Necessary. 

The Catholic Encyclopaedia states the case fair¬ 
ly, saying: “Modern knowledge justifies the belief 
that in health it is never a food, but always a poison.” 
Carbohydrates, the only nourishment worth men¬ 
tioning in beer, are abundantly contained in the food 
we eat. According to Mr. Liebig’s chemical inves¬ 
tigations, 500 gallons of best Bavarian beer do not 
contain nourishment sufficient for one ordinary meal. 

Those who contend that our life is so strenuous 
that we must have stimulants, remind me of Mark 
Twain’s account of people rushing across Brooklyn 
bridge and pushing a few pedestrians into the river 
in their frantic effort to get to New York and sit 
down in a park. We could cut down our strenuosity 
by one-half, were the drink nuisance eliminated. Our 
most strenuous and efficient workers are total ab¬ 
stainers. Lincoln, Gen. Fred Grant, President Wih 


9 



son, Secretary W. J. Bryan, Speaker Champ Clark, 
are illustrious examples, which could be multiplied. 

Nobody Normally Craves Intoxicants. 

If any one craves them, it is because he has de¬ 
liberately cultivated the taste, has courted the dan¬ 
ger: “He that loveth danger shall perish in it.”— 
Ecclus. 3:27. A little intelligent effort on the part 
of parents would make children abstainers, but most 
Catholics I have known, wanted their children to be, 
not abstainers, but moderate drinkers, and hence the 
flourishing condition of saloons and drunkenness in 
many Catholic communities. The oft-repeated argu¬ 
ment put forth by saloon champions, that instead of 
removing temptations from the young, you should 
teach them to resist, is too silly to be taken ser¬ 
iously by any intelligent person. God indeed per¬ 
mits temptations, but it is our duty to remove them 
and flee from them if possible, just as we shun con¬ 
tagious diseases and remove their causes, if possible. 
The same applies to many other things that God 
permits: “If thy hand or thy foot scandalize thee, 
cut it off and cast it from thee.”—Matt. 18:8. 

“He that loveth danger (fosters it, tolerates it 
unnecessarily) shall perish in it.”—Ecclus. 3:27. A 
man living near a dangerous wild bear, might afford 
the bear some wholesome amusement by running 
away every time the bear takes a notion to devour 
him, but under the circumstances the man would 
show better judgment by sending a bullet through 
the bear’s head, and selling his hide. 


10 


6 . DRINK INTERESTS AND AMERICAN IN¬ 
STITUTIONS MUST EVER BE 
ANTAGONISTIC. 

Probably few readers of this booklet have any 
idea of the rottenness of American politics, owing 
to liquor influences. Wherever the saloon holds 
sway, men of character and principle are debarred 
from office, and saloon tools and catspaws are 
elected. Laws for the public weal and in the inter¬ 
est of morality are stifled, or enacted merely to 
“play politics.” The saloonist knows neither party 
nor principle, but works and votes first, last, and all 
the time for the drink traffic. Whether one or the 
other party wins, he is among the victors. To him 
“victors” means the friends and supporters of sa¬ 
loons; and “spoils” means everything that his tools 
can steal and still keep out of the penitentiary. 
Owing to this inherently corrupting and debasing 
saloon influence, virtue in saloon-ruled communities 
is fostered and supported by private subscription, 
while vice is protected and promoted by saloon- 
elected officers, who draw fat salaries from the earn¬ 
ings of honest people and fancy perquisites from the 
vice and graft they protect and encourage. Investi¬ 
gations, vice commissions, revelations and prosecu¬ 
tions we have without number; the people’s money 
pays for them, and if any change follows, it generally 
consists in one set of grafters being turned out, and 
another set of saloon grafters being put in charge. 

We fight socialism instead of fighting its cause, 
the liquor traffic, which is responsible for the wrongs 


IT 


against which socialism is a protest. Legislators 
who owe their election to the liquor forces and 
whose legislative sessions wind up in pandemonium 
and a chorus of ‘‘Nobody Knows How Dry I Am,” 
are more interested in pleasing the liquorites and 
taking care of their own political “fences,” than in 
serving justice or redressing grievances of the peo¬ 
ple. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” but 
a drunken “vigilance”—never. 

Kill the liquor traffic, and our better class of 
people will be able to elect honest and conscientious 
officers, we shall have just laws and officials to en¬ 
force them, and then socialism and a number of other 
moral, social and political ills will die a natural death. 


7. OTHER EVILS THAT WILL DIE WITH 
THE DRINK TRAFFIC. 

“It is at once the result and security of oppres¬ 
sion that its victims soon become incapable of re¬ 
sistance. Submission to its first encroachments is 
followed by the fatal lethargy that destroys every 
noble ambition and converts the people into coward¬ 
ly poltroons and fawning sycophants, who hug their 
chains and lick the hand that smites them.”—An- 
omyous. 

With the passing of the demoralizing drink 
slavery will go a number of associated evils. The 
beastly abomination called “white slave traffic” will 
not be tolerated under no-saloon rule. The so-called 
“legalized vice,” (commercialized vice), too long 
endured as a “necessary evil,” and now abolished 


12 



by progressive Christian nations, will not be en¬ 
dured and will not be able to subsist without its 
invariable and necessary companion, the beverage 
liquor traffic. (See “Educating to Purity,” by Jes¬ 
uit Fathers.) 

That lack of interest in anything but drinking 
and carousing, characteristic of the saloon debauchee; 
his stupid self-sufficiency and concentrated selfish¬ 
ness; the coarse vulgarity having no understanding of 
manly manhood nor appreciation of pure and refined 
womanhood—all these will be conspicuously absent 
after the liquor traffic is abolished. As a result, 
there will be more marriages, happier homes, fewer 
divorces, and in the Catholic Church, fewer “mixed 
marriages.” For the perverting liquor traffic nuis¬ 
ance being abated, neither our young men nor young 
ladies will have occasion to seek eligible companions 
outside the Catholic fold. 


8 . THE CATHOLIC CHURCH COULD ABOL¬ 
ISH THE EVIL. 

The accompanying illustration shows the Cath¬ 
olic attitude on the liquor question as it appears 
to numberless even fair-minded non-Catholics. The 
cartoon was not designed to apply specifically to 
Catholics, but it so nearly fits us, that some of us 
will resent it as an insult and outrage. I have thou¬ 
sands of letters from temperance workers in every 
state of the Union, from Catholics and non-Catholics, 
and the complaint is well-nigh general, that Cath¬ 
olic people, priests and papers, either take no part 


13 



in temperance work, or support the liquor forces. 
I could give a number of instances where local priests 
during “wet” and “dry” campaigns, refused their 
consent to have the “dry’ side presented by a priest 
or Catholic layman, but gave the glad hand to 
Catholic editors and others to lecture in favor of 
saloons, and even from their pulpits denounced hon¬ 
est anti-saloon efforts. If local priests are for the 
saloons, and our temperance priests are forbidden 
to lecture outside their owji parishes, how are our 
people to be educated away from the saloon and to 
sobriety? By our Catholic press, perchance. 


M 



Conquer the World and then Surrender to 
the Liquor Traffic. 


Christians 


































g. CATHOLIC NEWSPAPERS. 

Our saintly Pope Pius X., has said: “A Catholic 
newspaper is a perpetual mission in the home.” 
The Pope refers, of course, to really Catholic papers. 
There are good and bad so-called Catholic papers, 
as there are good and bad Catholics. Some of our 
“Catholic” papers are owned by the liquor interests, 
others on account of entanglements, stockholders, 
liquor advertisements, friendships, political favors 
and prospects, will not say a word to hurt the 
saloons, but really encourage drinking, and, inci¬ 
dentally, its accompanying iniquities. They display 
the Pope’s commendation in big letters, and occas¬ 
ionally add an episcopal “approbation,” but give 
the readers booze instead of bread, and serpents in¬ 
stead of truth.—Matt. 7 - 9, io. They are “blind lead¬ 
ers of the blind.”—Luke 6:39. Yet these papers are 
not altogether to blame, for unless our people hear 
temperance truth from the pulpit, they will promptly 
discontinue any paper showing any temperance 
leanings. Temperance truth will be preached by 
our priests just so soon as their respective bishops 
want it preached; and by temperance preaching, I 
mean here not such as provokes the smile of the 
boozer and invites the greater generosity of the 
saloon-keeper, but the kind that will have a decided 
tendency to cause a shrinkage in the saloon-keeper’s 
income and his church contribution. 

“Let them (priests) never cease to cry out bold¬ 
ly against drunkenness and whatever leads to it.”— 
III. Council of Baltimore. And to do this consist- 
16 


ently and effectually, they must be total abstainers. 
“Being made a pattern of the flock .... the shep¬ 
herd goeth before and the flock followeth him. Let 
pastors, therefore, shine before all as models of 
abstinence.”—Letter of Pope Leo XIII, March 27, 
1887. 


10. CATHOLICS PROGRESSING. 

Dr. Austin O’Maley of Philadelphia, who has 
repeatedly crossed swords with the leading Cath¬ 
olic theologians of the world with credit to himself, 
published in the Ecclesiastical Review of Philadel¬ 
phia, a series of remarkable scientific temperance 
articles, beginning in the November number, 1912. 
These articles are certain to have a far-reaching 
effect, and will mark a new era in Catholic temper¬ 
ance work. The Review is read by Catholic eccles¬ 
iastics throughout the English-speaking world, and 
is considered absolutely conservative and reliable. 
These articles give succinctly what science has dem¬ 
onstrated, and temperance people have been preach¬ 
ing the last fifty years. The following extracts will 
furnish the reader with food for some wholesome 
thought, though they do no manner of justice to 
their author’s marvelous learning and thoroughness 
nor the utter impregnability of his position: 

“The vice of intemperance, with its integral 
parts, gluttony, drunkenness and unchastity brings 
to the priest for healing more sin and misery than 
any other form of revolt against the law of God.”— 
Nov., 1912, p. 533. 


t 7 



“It is how an established medical fact that 
chronic alcoholic intoxication can, except in rare 
cases, be induced by the daily consumption at one 
sitting of from 40 to 100 grammes of alcohol.”— 
lb., p. 546. 

“No person has ever yet taken two or three drinks 
of whisky daily, or a pint of claret, and escaped chronic 
alcoholism; and when such a patient comes to the 
physican and prates about ‘break-down from over¬ 
work,’ or ‘the will of God,’ and the like, he is a hypo¬ 
crite or a fool—usually both.”—lb., p. 534. 

“About three pints of German beer, or a quart 
of English porter taken (daily) at one sitting, say at 
dinner, induces chronic alcoholism.”—lb., p. 546. 

“The test in these cases is to shut off the alcohol 
entirely and if within a week or two there is no 
craving for alcohol the person is not a chronic alco¬ 
holic—but there alway» is a craving.”—lb., p. 456. 

“The action upon man of spirituous drinks is in 
ratio of their alcoholic content, but ingredients other 
than alcohol also have marked intoxicant influence: 
malt liquors, for example, irritate far beyond their 
alcoholic strength.”—lb., p. 540. 

“Chronic alcoholism, as far as the body is con¬ 
cerned is evidently a disease .... but it is a self- 

inflicted disease.As the acquisition of the 

disease of chronic alcoholism is the result of a series 
of immoral acts, the fact that it is a grave physical 
disease adds to the moral turpitude.”—April, 1913, 
P- 430. 

“To exhort the drunkard morally before making 
any attempt to remove the irritating and overwhelm- 
18 


ing alcoholic poison, is as practical as praying be¬ 
fore a wooden idol.”—lb., p. 418. 

“St. Thomas in his earlier writings taught 
that drunkenness is in its nature a venial sin, and 
becomes mortal only per accidens; he later changed 
his opinion to that now held by moralists.”—lb., 
p. 427. 

Right here we have a pitfall that has been the 
ruin and death, not of tens of thousands, but of mil¬ 
lions. Depriving oneself of reason by drink is only 
a venial sin, they say, if the loss of reason is not 
complete, and a mortal si*, if complete; but, good 
God! is this momentary loss of reason the only 
thing to be considered! Dr. O’Malley answers: 

“As was shown above, 50 grammes of alcohol 

taken at a daily sitting.brings on all the 

somatic injuries of chronic alcoholism although the 
drinker may not become drunk in the meaning of 
the term as used by moral theologians. The bodily 
diseases, the loss of working power, the injury done 
society and offspring, can all become mortal sins in 
themselves apart from any notion of technical ine¬ 
briation. Sometimes, even a pint of American beer 
taken daily at a meal for twelve days will so con¬ 
gest the kidneys of the middle-aged man, who has 
been proved to be healthy by frequent previous ex¬ 
aminations, that casts will appear.In such r 

case a pint of beer daily is a dangerous excess, and 
where a family is dependent on the man the excess is 
a grave sin; just what degree would constitute a 
mortal sin in this case would have to be judged 
specially. To take a drug in a quantity sufficient to 
19 



cause chronic inflammation of the liver or kidneys, 
degeneration of the nerves, and the like, can evident¬ 
ly become mortal sin, apart from any notion of 
drunkenness as a deprivation of consciousness, pro¬ 
vided the person knows that he is bringing on these 
bodily diseases.”—lb., p. 430. 

Note the last words, “provided the person 
knows” the consequences; but what if the person 
does not know, and does not care to know? Has 
nobody any duty to see to it that people may know 
or realize the awful and far-reaching consequences 
of this unnecessary drink evil? Many of our people 
do not know, and what is worse, it would be useless 
to tell them, for they would naturally conclude that 
if drinking and the drink traffic were as bad as they 
are said to be. Church and State would prohibit them. 
What could be more natural than this conclusion? 


11. A PARALLEL. 

Opium was undoing China as alcohol is undoing 
us. The Church authorities appealed to Rome, and 
Rome answered thus: 

“I. The culture of opium is in itself not illicit, 
but in China becomes so by reason of the abuses to 
which it gives rise. Long experience conclusively 
proves this, consequently it should be prohibited to 
Catholics. 

“II. Likewise, because of the abuses resulting 
therefrom, commerce in opium, though not in itself 
illicit, should be forbidden and prohibited by law, 


20 



and not only is direct commerce in opium prohibited, 
but all commerce therein. 

“III. The existing use of opium in China is 
held by the Church to be a detestable abuse, and 
therefore illicit. 

“IV. The use of opium may be permitted to 
those so accustomed thereto and who could not 
abstain therefrom without danger of death or ser¬ 
ious detriment. They may use it as medicine, ac¬ 
cording to due regulations and with all the precau¬ 
tions calculated to guard against abuses or evil 
consequences.”—Acts Sanctae Sedis, fasc. 284. Dec. 
29, 1891. 

Commenting on the above, Martin I. J. Griffin, 
for many years our leading Catholic historian, wrote: 
“Opium in China may be prohibited by the Pope, but 
what is there in the principles above defined which 
takes rum in the United States out of a similar Pro¬ 
hibition decree? Rum in our country is doing as 
much harm to the souls and bodies of the people as 
opium is doing to the Cb : nese, and therefore the 
analogy between the> use oi of.tim in China (which 
the Church condemns as an abuse), and the use of 
intoxicating beverages in America, is sufficiently 
striking to prove to the most prejudiced that Prohi¬ 
bition is the most doctrinally correct.”—Griffin’s 
Journal, August 1, 1892. 

On reading of this prohibition of opium, any 
American knowing the situation would be apt to say, 
nothing remarkable in that, it was the only thing to 
do. And were our prelates to send a similar request 
to Rome, and were the Pope to issue a similar order, 
21 


forbidding Catholics to have anything to do with the 
beverage liquor traffic, a Chinaman, familiar with the 
situation, would be apt to say, nothing strange about 
that, it was the only thing to do. 

Such an order might lose us some hopeless hypo¬ 
critical hangers-on, but would win us the esteem and 
good-will of all respectable Americans, regardless 
of creed, a thing we can scarcely hope for while the 
liquor dealer is our special protege. 

However we need not wait for such an order 
from the Pope. If our heart is right, our duty is 
plain. The Pope’s prohibitive order to China did not 
make the opium evil one whit worse than it had 
been before the order was issued. It was issued 
because the evil was there. The evil would have been 
there just the same, had the order not been issued. 
The liquor traffic evil is with us, and we know it, 
whether or not our prelates conclude that we ought 
to have a prohibition of it by the Pope. 


12. CHURCH AND STATE. 

God is the author of both Church and State.— 
i Peter 2:13 seq. Each has its own sphere, yet each 
should be helpful to the other. The same Jesus de¬ 
clared, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 
18:36), and “Every kingdom divided against itself 
shall be made desolate; and every city or house di¬ 
vided against itself shall not stand.”—Matt. 12:25. 
The following, therefore, rings true to both reason 
and gospel: “It is coming to be generally, if not 
univ sally, recognized that the ‘Social Question’ can 
22 


W4 « 



be solved only by the co-operation of the three 
agencies of Church, State and the individual. The 
problem far exceeds the range of individual, even 
though organized, efforts, whilst only the Utopian 
idealist, blind to the perverse selfishness of human 
nature, expects that religious motives alone will 
suffice to induce men to co-operate for the common 
good. The strong arm of the State enforcing wise 
civil legislation is in the actual conditions of society 
an essentially necessary factor for effecting any 
permanent economic reformation.”—Eccl. Rev., Apr., 

1912, p. 505. 


13. CATHOLICS AND LEGAL PROHIBITION. 

The American beverage liquor traffic is a con¬ 
stant source of numberless, boundless and unspeak¬ 
able evils, and ought to be prohibited by civil enact¬ 
ment. In an address before the National Total Ab¬ 
stinence Convention, at St. Paul, Minn., August t, 
1891, Archbishop Ireland said: “We must work and 
bend every effort so that Catholics in political mat¬ 
ters will always be arrayed against the liquor inter¬ 
est. Strange it is, but people who have in their 
hearts a love of temperance will go on election day 
and vote with saloon interests. What is the cause 
I know not. I think sometimes that it is political 
slavery. Now, political slavery or any slavery is 
hideous; and especially is it so when it enslaves the 
will and debases the character.” 

Believe in God and Vote for Mammon* 
Notwithstanding the distinguished prelate’s eu- 
23 



phemism, “What is the cause I know not,” I shall 
venture the following explanation: According to 
local option elections and other manifestations, a 
large majority of the better class of the American 
people are in favor of Prohibition; but they do not 
say so with their ballot, because they love Mammon 
more than God. If they loved God and their fellow- 
men more than they love temporal gain, they would 
(a) see to it that a Prohibition plank were put into 
their platform, real Prohibition, not some wishy- 
washy substitute; and (b) vote for Prohibition, re¬ 
gardless of what the comparatively insignificant and 
purely political planks on one or the other platform 
might be. 

The voters now divide on purely political issues, 
because they consider these of supreme consequence 
to their pocketbook. As a result we have good, bad 
and indifferent voters in either party. The resultant 
of a mixture of good, bad and indifferent, is indiffer¬ 
ent, if not worse. The resultant of our present po¬ 
litical mixture—law with its enforcements— is far 
from what it would be, were the better class of our 
citizens united in one party. Nothing but a para¬ 
mount moral question, like the question of temper¬ 
ance, can bring about such an alignment. The 
tariff question, for instance, cannot do it, for some 
good voters are benefited by a protective tariff, and 
others by a low tariff. The way our good people 
now work reminds me of one of Secretary W. J. 
Bryan’s illustrations: “Borros in South America, on 
seeing an enemy approach, stick their heads together 
and kick outwards, but our reformers turn their heads 
24 


to the enemy and kick one another.” And yet some 
of these good people wonder at and whine about the 
brazen and “unavoidable” progress of wickedness. 
“Be not deceived, God is not mocked. For what 
things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap.”— 
Gal. 6:7, 8. 


14. LET US BE FAIR. 

Here and now in the United States anything 
short of Prohibition means contemptible compro¬ 
mise with evil. To use the words of William Mc¬ 
Kinley: “By legalizing this traffic we agree to share 
with the liquor-seller the responsibilities and evils 
of his business. Every man who votes for license 
becomes of necessity a partner to the liquor traffic 
and all its consequences.” 

The amount of literature on the subject of tem¬ 
perance is “immense,” says the Catholic Encyclo¬ 
paedia. Has the reader perused even as much as a 
single Prohibition year-book? Is it fair to condemn 
without a hearing? 

Prohibition, they say, has been weighed, and 
found wanting. The fact is it has never been 
weighed. Prohibition is not simply a law on the 
statute-book, just as guns are not war, and spades 
are not gardening. To give Prohibition a fair trial, 
we must have Prohibition laws, officials who believe 
in Prohibition, to enforce them, and no nullification 
of the laws by higher authorities. We have not had 
these, yet Prohibition at its worst and under great 
handicaps, has always been found far better than 

25 



license at its best, notwithstanding the constant, 
blatant and self-stultifying assertions of the liquor- 
ites to the contrary. 

Woman’s suffrage would tend to help moral re¬ 
form. No state having equal suffrage, has any 
thought of going back to the old order. Cardinal 
Vaughn of England, declared: “I believe that the 
extension of the parliamentary franchise to women 
upon the same conditions as it is held by men would 
be a just and beneficial measure, tending to raise 
rather than to lower the course of national legisla¬ 
tion.” 

Cardinal Moran of Australia, where woman has 
exercised full franchise since 1902, writes: “What 
does voting mean to a woman?. As a mother, she 
has a special interest in the legislation of her country, 

for upon it depends the welfare of her children. 

The woman who thinks she is making herself un¬ 
womanly by voting is a silly creature.”—Cath. Ency., 
Article “Woman.” 

Or, to quote the fearless and beloved Rt. Rev. 
McQuade, D.D., late bishop of Rochester: “It fills 
me with joy when I think of the many changes that 
will be brought about when women have the right 
of suffrage. They will defy the politicians, and vote 
as any Christian man should and would vote if he 
had the moral courage.”—Father Zurcher’s “Cath¬ 
olics and Prohibition,” June, 1913. 

Of course the liquor forces work with might and 
main against woman’s suffrage. 

The wet” champions say Prohibition violates 
personal liberty, and is wrong in principle. If this 
26 



contention were correct, then were the liquor traffic 
one hundred times as harmful as it now is, the state 
could still not prohibit it, for the same principle 
would apply. This shows the absurdity of their as¬ 
sumption. Personal liberty as advocated by the 
liquorites is anarchy. In a civilized community peo¬ 
ple enjoy civil liberty, which means to do as they 
please so long as their conduct does not infringe 
the rights of others. 

Dr. Orestes Brownson, the prodigious American 
genious, of whom Catholics are justly proud, wrote 
in his preface to his “Essays”: “Liberty is, no doubt, 
threatened in this country; but the danger comes 
chiefly from the side of license, and is best averted, 
not by commonplace declamations for the largest 
liberty, but by asserting and maintaining the su¬ 
premacy of the law.” 

A state has admittedly a right, not only to safe¬ 
guard its existence, but also to promote its well¬ 
being. The liquor traffic may not threaten the very 
existence of the state, but it seriously hampers its 
highest development. 

Father Rickaby, S. J., in his noted “Moral Phil¬ 
osophy,” speaking of “Law and Liberty,” p. 358, says: 
“It certainly is within the province of the state ta 
prevent any parent from launching upon the world 
a brood of young barbarians, ready to disturb the 
peace of civil society.” 

The United States supreme court has declared: 
“No corporation or individual can acquire any rights 
by contract or otherwise which the government may 
not annul or take away if the exercise of such rights 
27 


becomes detrimental to the public health or the pub¬ 
lic morals.”—Gas Light Co. vs. La. Light Co., 6 
Sup. Ct. Rep. 262. 

And in Lawton vs. Steele, 152 U. S. 133, the same 
court said: “It (the police power) is universally con¬ 
ceded to include everything essential to public safety, 
health and morals, and to justify the destruction of a 
house falling to decay or otherwise endangering the 
lives of passersby; the demolition of such as are in 
the path of a conflagration; the slaughter of diseased 
cattle; the destruction of decayed or unwholesome 
food; the prohibition or wooden buildings in cities; 
the regulation of railways and other means of public 
conveyance and of interments in burial grounds; the 
restriction of objectionable trades to certain local¬ 
ities; the compulsory vaccination of children; the 
confinement of the insane or those afflicted with 
contagious diseases; the restraint of vagrants, beg¬ 
gars, and habitual drunkards; the suppression of 
obscene publications and houses of ill-fame; and the 
prohibition of gambling houses and places where 
intoxicating liquors are sold.” 

The liquor traffic is a constant and unjust tax 
upon a community. It gets the money and the com¬ 
munity gets the damage, as Mr. Robert Bagnell in 
his excellent “Economics and Moral Aspects of the 
Liquor Business” says: “It is beyond doubt that the 
cost of saloons to the community far exceeds the 
revenue derived from licenses.” 

The primary purpose of Prohibition is not, as 
many suppose, to prevent people from drinking in¬ 
toxicants, but to put a stop to the manufacture and 
28 


sale of alcoholic liquors for beverage purposes. On 
this question, strange as the statement may seem to 
some readers, the argument is all on the side of 
Prohibition. This fact has been demonstrated time 
and again in public debates. In 1909 a memorable 
debate of this kind took place in Milwaukee and 
Chicago, between Mr. Samuel Dickie of Albion, 
Michigan, and Mayor Rose of Milwaukee. Nobody 
questioned the ability of the two carefully selected 
champions to do full justice to their respective side. 
Mayor Rose, champion against Prohibition, was so 
badly worsted, that he refused to take part in the 
third and final discussion which had been agreed 
upon. 

What people generally need is, not so much 
argument in favor of Prohibition, which they know 
is right and logical, but they need to be lifted out of 
the grave of custom; they need to be freed from the 
slavery of human respect. They need to realize that 

“They are slaves who dare not be 
In the right with two or three.” 

—J. R. Lowell. 


“God give us men! A time like this demands 
Strongminds, greathearts, true faith, and ready hands; 
Men whom the lust of office cannot buy; 

Men who possess opinions and a will; 

Men who have honor; men who will not lie; 

Men who can stand before a demagogue 
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking! 
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog 
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